[ANN] get_iplayer search and PVR functions no longer work - no fix available

[Nick]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:29:50 -0400
"Timothy" <tmthywynn8 at aol.com> wrote:
> Well crap. This means all the RSS feeds are now gone. I was already
> struggling with the new iPlayer interface before and was so glad for
> the RSS feeds. Now they just abruptly disappear and I'm left
> floundering. Lovely. Looking at the replacement for said feeds, there
> doesn't seem to be any information for end-user access. It's all
> developer-based.
> 
> I guess this means I'll have to deal with the inherently visual
> nature of BBC iPlayer's site from now on? *sigh* This is what I get
> for being a complacent blindy...

Timothy

I got on with the RSS feeds too, more information per programme would
have been nice but it was just so much better than their graphic-based
website.

As someone who can see the website is still awful! It needs a lot of
scrolling about in an artificially small pane (where some content is
visible, but obscured by a trendy translucent element). Items have to
be mouse-overed to get information and so it is very tedious to use.

There are also adverts to avoid, like the ones for proprietary
communication networks. Those adverts often being done with fonts must
be wonderfully useless and confusing for the partially-sighted too!

Personally yesterday when I had to use the iplayer website I turned off
the page style so that I could find what I wanted! I didn't want to
systematically have to scour a page.... it's worse than that, it isn't
like being faced with a broadsheet-sized page of text, the web site has
to have lots of looking AND interacting, checking the proprietary
interface doesn't have some silly and unexpected feature. And they use
lots of pictures, most of which are meaningless to those that don't
watch the programme. Just random grinning kids and middle-aged wallies,
WTF are they meant to mean?

In the end I figured out their URLs, got onto the categories I wanted
manually changed things, and bookmarked all the tabs. Hopefully this
will do as a stop-gap until some RSS comes back and I can just have a
nice text interface again. One key to move between categories, etc..
Plus with my RSS reader I build up my own record of what has been on,
and maybe the best bit, the RSS feeds were repeat free!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/comedy/all?sort=dateavailable
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/history/all?sort=dateavailable
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/science-and-nature/all?sort=dateavailable
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/music/all?sort=dateavailable
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/documentaries/all?sort=dateavailable
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/news/all?sort=dateavailable

What I pulled by RSS was more granular than the above, but at least the
above pages show programmes sort-of like my RSS reader, newest
programmes at the top of a list.

Nick